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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174988">let winter light come</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch'>radialarch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blizzards &amp; Snowstorms, Drunken Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:35:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174988</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dimitri's hair is silver. </p><p>No—it is thick with snow, and so are his eyelashes, the ruff of his cloak. "What," Felix starts to say, and coughs up half-melted ice. The motion makes pain shoot up his side; he grits his teeth around a noise. A slow breath, in and out. He can deal with pain.</p><p>Then he realizes his head is in Dimitri's lap.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>203</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>let winter light come</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>contains mentions of hunting rabbits for survival. also, felix is probably concussed, but they don't talk about it.</p><p>thanks to lucy for graciously wrangling my commas. title from vienna teng's drought.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The fault, Felix thinks furiously, is Sylvain’s.</p><p>A mere excursion from Sreng would not have been handled by the king; that is a job for the soldiers of Gautier, and the palace would have happily supplied a company of the King’s Knights had assistance been requested. But Sylvain had not asked. Instead, Sylvain had gone to parley under a flag of peace, and he had not returned.</p><p>It is irrelevant, Felix supposes, to ask whether Dimitri is acting as a king or a friend, that they should now be in Gautier territory’s northernmost point searching for its margrave. It is enough that he had insisted on coming, and that had not left Felix with any kind of choice.</p><p>Felix wonders, sometimes, how many mistakes he will make in order to avoid his father’s.</p><p>The trees on the mountains are bare this time of year, frosted with early snow. It is not a good place for a war party, even less so for a search party. The pegasus knights are useless with the mounts whickering at the cold seeping under their pinions; the wyverns were sent back two days ago. Through his fur-lined gloves Felix’s fingers ache with cold. </p><p>If Sylvain is not dead, Felix will kill him when they find him.</p><p>—</p><p>“We can’t go on like this,” he tells Dimitri that night in his tent, an advisor to his king. “You’ve been away from the capital long enough.” Surely Dimitri knows this. It was one thing to depart from Fhirdiad in the wake of bad news, but in the days since, they have not found a trace of him. Sylvain has not been misplaced; he has been <em>hidden</em>. Put like this, Felix’s duties are quite clear. He has never sworn an oath to House Gautier.</p><p>Dimitri does not listen. Dimitri paces, which Felix allows because Dimitri’s lips are pale with cold. “I can’t ignore this,” he says, “an attack on my subjects,” and Felix stares until Dimitri admits the weakness of his argument by glancing away. </p><p>“At least have the courtesy of making your excuses believable,” Felix says, too snappish by half. “I seem to recall someone arguing against governance at the whims of one man.”</p><p>Dimitri stops his pacing, at least. He says, with a sort of shamefaced incredulity, “I had no idea you paid attention at the councils.”</p><p>Mostly, Felix does not; mostly, it is a waste of Felix’s time, and Dimitri’s, and Felix would much rather dismiss all the old fools who believe their words have worth because of the deeds of their great-grandfathers. But he listens to Dimitri, who has ideas like his father had ideas, and who is therefore a target like his father was a target. He listens to Dimitri’s words, often intemperate, always honest, and considers the ways that Dimitri makes his life difficult.</p><p>“Your subjects—” he puts the emphasis on the plural “—deserve more than this. Others can search for the margrave. Your responsibility is at the capital.”</p><p>“And what of the responsibility of one friend to another?” </p><p>Dimitri is dangerously close to anger. Felix understands it even as he says, “You are a king.”</p><p>If Felix is to do his job, he cannot allow otherwise. He wonders, sometimes, if it’s worth it to save the king at the expense of the man. He wonders what it means that his father did not try.</p><p>Just a year ago, Felix would have believed that there was no <em>man</em> to save.</p><p>Dimitri’s smile is brittle when it comes. “So I am to be sent to safety like a child to its nursery,” he says. “You weren’t always like this, Felix.”</p><p>There is no response Felix can give. “Your Majesty,” he says, and Dimitri waves a hand in dismissal.</p><p>—</p><p>The demonic beast comes before dawn.</p><p>Felix is aware first of the electricity in the air which makes his teeth ache; then the shouts. He’s out of his tent before he fully wakes, heedless of the cold. Outside, the dark is punctuated by sparks of magelight. Someone swings a lance and is gone, between one flicker and the next, with only the smell of fresh blood to mark that anyone was there at all.</p><p>“Dimitri,” he says, pitched to carry above the beast’s roar. Then he sees the cloak.</p><p>Dimitri's injury is old, old enough that he has learned to compensate for the lack of an eye. In daylight, he manages. Not so in the night time, when the world flattens into light and shadow. Not enough to fight this thing the way he intends.</p><p>"To the king," he shouts, a flash of lightning from his fingers. Strong enough to illuminate the campsite, starkly white, before the glow fades. He does it again, then again. The beast, a hunter in the dark, is roaring in wounded confusion, and he sees the other mages begin to do the same, their faces bathed in blue, green, white. At the beast's feet, Areadbhar glows, a dull, furious arc of light.</p><p>The spark in Felix's palm dies, and with it comes the numbness. Felix ignores it. The sword is still familiar in his grasp. He has trained for this; he could be blind, sick with pain, and still he would raise the sword and know how to kill. </p><p>His father had a shield, great and shining. Felix only has himself.</p><p>The beast is rearing back, its maw wide open. Underneath their feet, the ground rumbles. Dimitri, the idiot, is signaling <em>retreat</em> to the others even as he waits for the head to descend.</p><p>Areadbhar would do much, jammed into the beast's throat; and Dimitri would die.</p><p>Felix is on Dimitri's blind side. He doesn't check his speed when he rams into Dimitri's side, which means Dimitri is flung back, away from the beast, while Felix chokes on the pain. The rumble is so much louder now. A snowflake alights on his cheek.</p><p>Then: whiteness.</p><p>—</p><p>There's something cold on Felix's face. A light brush across his forehead. A tap on his cheek; then again, harder. It doesn't hurt, but Felix considers protesting out of principle, regardless.</p><p>"Felix," says a voice he knows too well, and Felix wakes.</p><p>Dimitri's hair is silver. </p><p>No—it is thick with snow, and so are his eyelashes, the ruff of his cloak. "What," Felix starts to say, and coughs up half-melted ice. The motion makes pain shoot up his side; he grits his teeth around a noise. A slow breath, in and out. He can deal with pain.</p><p>Then he realizes his head is in Dimitri's lap.</p><p>His vision goes grey when he tries to get up a second time.There's sweat beading at Felix's temple, which chills in seconds, but at least the feeling seems to be coming back to his face. It takes him another moment to gather his wits and speak.</p><p>"Avalanche," he rasps, which Dimitri confirms with a nod. "Anyone else alive?"</p><p>Dimitri's mouth twists. "The others were corpses," he says. "The few I could find, anyway. These woods are going to be delightful come spring." He pauses. "It killed the beast, too."</p><p>"Yes, well, we'll leave that problem to Sylvain when he's found," says Felix. This time, when he moves to sit up, Dimitri helps. It takes him a minute, and he has to clutch onto Dimitri's shoulder to keep from swaying, but it's still a relief when he can see something other than Dimitri's concerned face.</p><p>The landscape is glittering coldly as far as Felix can see. "No tracks," Felix says out loud, thinking. "You'll have to go by the sun. Easiest to try Gautier, of course, but if you meet the river and follow it south you can reach Fraldarius. Did you manage to find any supplies? Bedroll, firestarter?" Not for the first time, Felix curses Dimitri for being so thoroughly unmagical. But then, a Blaiddyd with magic would bring its own set of problems.</p><p>"<em>I'll</em> have to go?" Dimitri says with a mulish expression. "Felix, I'm not leaving you."</p><p>Of course Dimitri would pick now to fight. “I’ll be fine,” Felix says, mustering up the last of his patience. “I’ll slow you down if you take me. Bring back a phalanx of healers if you’d like.” He absently feels for his pouch, but there’s nothing. He’d barely thrown on his coat before stumbling out into the fray. If only he’d once taken up Mercedes’s offer to teach him healing—but faith is not something that comes to Felix easily.</p><p>Dimitri fumbles in his own cloak. “Here,” he says, tipping a flask to Felix’s mouth. The sharp taste of whiskey clears his head, makes the pain in his side easier to bear. It’s probably a cracked rib. The one thing Felix knows precisely and completely is the limits of his own body.</p><p>“Couldn’t find anything else,” Dimitri says, apologetic. “The vulneraries cracked under the weight of the snow. We’ll have to talk to Annette when we return to Fhirdiad—it’s a problem she’d like solving.”</p><p>“When you return to Fhirdiad,” Felix says. He tries to think. Dedue is involved with negotiations for the Duscur people, which means a fortnight at least to get him news. Ingrid had been overseeing a training exercise at Gronder Field, but she’s due back at the castle this week. She’ll come herself when she hears about Sylvain. They’re four days out from the Gautier estate, and even without a horse Dimitri can travel fast when he’s not burdened by slower men.</p><p>Dimitri knows all this, and yet he still refuses to leave. “The night before last,” he suggests. “We can shelter in the caves there. Build up a signal fire.”</p><p>“You have no heir,” Felix snaps, too exhausted now for diplomacy. “You cannot throw away Fódlan for <em>this</em>.” House Fraldarius has given the throne too many lives. Felix is not Glenn—he is not Rodrigue—but he has tried to make the sacrifice mean something. </p><p>“Felix,” says Dimitri, catching hold of his wild gesturing hand, and he does not say it like a king, only like a tired, human man. “I’m tired of leaving my friends to die.”</p><p>—</p><p>In the end, Dimitri carries Felix to the caves. He’s careful, but still there are vibrations that jar up Felix’s ribs, and he can feel himself going taut with the pain. Dimitri stops when it gets too much and offers more of the whiskey, and this means that Felix is very warm and very drunk by the time Dimitri lowers him onto the cave floor.</p><p>“If you hadn’t dug me up,” Felix says, “then would you have gone back?” It’s a thought that’s been coalescing in his head during the walk. Felix tries not to deal in hypotheticals, but somehow it seems easier to tackle than anything in the present.</p><p>Dimitri gives Felix a strange look from where he’s spreading the bedroll. “I would have found you,” he says, which is not an answer at all. “Can you come lie on this?”</p><p>It’s only the threat of Dimitri carrying him again that makes Felix move his battered body over to the dry canvas. Once he’s there, Dimitri unceremoniously covers him with his cloak. “Stay here,” he says, as if Felix has a choice. “We need firewood.”</p><p>“You’re going to freeze,” Felix yells after him, “don’t be stupid,” but Dimitri doesn’t even hesitate; his shadow, outlined at the mouth of the cave, and then he’s gone.</p><p>Felix tips his head back onto the ground and curses Dimitri, the House of Blaiddyd, and the entire Holy Kingdom of Faerghus for good measure. Part of his hand is still numb, and Felix suspects that the tremor in it is only half from the cold. He’d used a lot of magic fighting the beast, and that always comes with a price. </p><p>The cloak is still warm from Dimitri’s shoulders; the collar smells faintly of sweat and the armor polish Dimitri favors. It’s a familiar scent, one that Felix has known all his life. He shifts, uneasy, and considers again the problem of Dimitri.</p><p>It is not that Dimitri does not want to be king. He takes to power with an ease born of habit, and it's not just words that he wants, but real change: fewer orphans abandoned in the streets; fewer deaths of the common people when the nobles go to war. Sometimes he says it with an earnest light, sometimes with a hint of the darkness before, and that's how Felix knows to believe in him.</p><p>But he is also a boy whom Felix has seen laughing and crying and everything in between. He is Dimitri, just Dimitri, and Felix could have been his friend if he had not become the Fraldarius heir at fourteen, the duke at twenty-four. The legacy of his father and his father's father is a suffocating weight, and he could not pick it back up if he rested for even a moment.</p><p>Felix knows his limits, and to love Dimitri would be to fail him.</p><p>But the cloak surrounds him with a comforting warmth, and Felix cannot shift its weight off him without a sharp pain driving the breath from his lungs. He folds a hand into the thick fur to stop it from shaking; he tries to untangle the muddle of his thoughts from the whiskey and the exhaustion and the ache in his chest; and somehow, with his nose buried in the soft snowlion pelt, he sleeps.</p><p>—</p><p>The crackle of flames is what wakes Felix a third time.</p><p>Dimitri has built the fire well, far enough that Felix could not smother it in sleep, but the warmth feels good seeping into Felix’s toes. There’s a supply of branches stacked further away, stripped of errant twigs and dusted free of ice, and somehow Dimitri seems to have found a battered tin bowl to hold a fistful of half-melted snow.</p><p>He is also, Felix realizes, skinning a rabbit. His ungloved hands are gold in the flickering light, the knife bloodied.</p><p>“Surprised you got that,” Felix croaks. “Thought you would’ve scared everything away for leagues.”</p><p>“You need to eat,” Dimitri says. He sets the rabbit to roast on a peeled stick, returns with his hands clean and reddened from the snow. “You’re drunk.”</p><p>He is drunk. He doesn’t normally like to be, but today is full of exceptions. “You care too much,” he mumbles. His mouth is so dry. “You always did like making things difficult.”</p><p>Dimitri comes over to him. He helps Felix lean up, one arm curled under Felix’s shoulder blades, so he can tip some water into Felix’s mouth. “Sorry,” he says, a little rueful. “I don’t mean to.”</p><p>“But you do.” It feels very important for Felix to say this. “You’re a good king. I’m glad it’s you. I wish I could be so—"</p><p>Dimitri's eye is dark. "So what?"</p><p>He must have hit his head. That's the only reason Felix can think of for the sudden prickle in his eyes. </p><p>"Honest," he says. He's so tired. Dimitri is here, warm and safe, and Felix wants to sleep.</p><p>"Not yet," Dimitri says, gently tapping his cheek. "Eat, first."</p><p>Dimitri slices slivers off the rabbit and places them on Felix's tongue; Felix swallows them one by one, and feels Dimitri's thumb brush his lower lip.</p><p>"There," Dimitri says, oddly tender. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind Felix's ear. "Now sleep."</p><p>—</p><p>There's something cool on Felix's forehead, smoothing out his brow. A soft, light pressure, nearly too brief to register.</p><p>"You keep me honest," Dimitri says, low. "So don't go dying on me now."</p><p>This is the truth: generations of Fraldarius men have died for the crown, but Felix—Felix wants to live.</p><p>—</p><p>Dimitri is asleep when Felix wakes. His back is to the cave wall, Felix's head on his knee, and his hand is holding Felix's.</p><p>Felix considers the novelty of this situation. Then he gets up.</p><p>His head is aching fiercely, but the sharp stab in his side has turned into a more bearable pain. When he staggers to his feet, his vision goes blurry at the edges, but he breathes through it until it passes and he can hold his head up again.</p><p>Dimitri's eye patch has come dislodged during the night. He can see the rough scarring at the corner of the eye, the deep cut that must have cost Dimitri his vision. Not for the first time, Felix wonders when it happened. Dimitri doesn't talk about it. Felix could have pushed. Had Rodrigue still been alive, Felix would have pushed. </p><p>Asleep, Dimitri-the-man is reminiscent of Dimitri-the-child. A softness around his mouth, and the curve of his cheek. Life had been simpler when they were children. One night, during a thunderstorm at Fraldarius manor, Felix had crept into the room Dimitri had been put in. "Let me stay with you," he had whispered, terrified, and Dimitri had promised, "As long as you need," just like that, and fallen asleep with Felix's hand clutched in his fist.</p><p>If Dimitri the man is someone worth saving, what does that make Felix?</p><p>"Dimitri," he says, too soft. Says it louder, above the crash of his heart. Dimitri's head jerks up, startled, and Felix puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.</p><p>"Felix," he says. The tip of his tongue, pink, comes out to wet his lips.</p><p>"What would you do if you weren't king?" Felix asks. "If we weren't—if none of us were anything." If House Blaiddyd and House Fraldarius had never stood between them, heavy with a millennium's worth of history, would that have made things easier?</p><p>There's still sleep in Dimitri's blue eye. "Why?" he asks, beautiful and bewildered. He is not the king right now; just a man. Just someone Felix wants.</p><p>"Keeping you honest," Felix says, and it comes out scraped thin, wavering. He is out of practice at this. If duty cannot be his armor, then he is exposed, wide-open and terrified. “Because I’d let you. Be what you wanted.”</p><p>Dimitri goes still: first with shock, and then with something else. “You’re hurt,” he says carefully. “We shouldn’t talk about this now.”</p><p>If they don’t do this now, Felix thinks, they never will.</p><p>It hurts when Felix curls a hand into the front of Dimitri’s shirt and tugs—when his tender ribs meet the solid muscle of Dimitri’s chest—but Felix has known about pain all his life. They were born to it, the two of them, their titles recompense for the weapons they made of their bodies. But this is different: the surprised huff of Dimitri’s breath against Felix’s cheek; the wet flicker of his tongue; Dimitri’s smile, pressed to the corner of Felix’s mouth. That’s something neither the kingdom nor tradition can claim. It’s the most honest thing Felix has done.</p><p>—</p><p>The day’s warmed up just enough for the snow to start melting, and Dimitri’s caught another rabbit.</p><p>“Is this some pastoral fantasy of yours?” Felix idly asks, and is interested to see Dimitri go faintly pink. Dimitri enjoys taking care of people. Felix hadn’t considered whether that might extend to himself.</p><p>But they can’t stay like this. No matter what, the kingdom beckons.</p><p>“You know, now that you’ve done your best to build me a fortress right here, you could go. I’d be fine for a few days. I know you’ll come back.”</p><p>Dimitri hesitates. “I should,” he admits. “I know you’ll be fine.” He sets the rabbit down and pokes at the fire. “Would you go? If it were the other way around.”</p><p>It would be easiest to say <em>yes</em>, but that’s not fair. Felix chews on the question. He has sometimes wondered if Rodrigue regretted that it had been Glenn who went to Duscur instead of himself. The generations of Fraldariuses who came before him had thought it an honor to die for their king.</p><p>“I suppose,” he says, “I wouldn’t have wanted to. And then you’d tell me to go, so I’d go.”</p><p>Dimitri’s mouth curves up. “That sounds right,” he says, warm and slow. “So it’s only fair that I do the same for you.”</p><p>—</p><p>It’s all Felix can do to convince Dimitri to take the cloak, but in the end he’s only gone for half a day. When he comes, he brings with him a horse, Ingrid’s knights, and Sylvain, completely whole.</p><p>“Wow, what happened to you?” Sylvain whistles as they’re strapping up Felix’s ribs. The bruise along his side is spectacular. The healers have warned Felix not to train for a fortnight.</p><p>“Why don’t you come closer,” Felix snaps, “and you can find out for yourself?” He won’t last through the week. He’ll get Mercedes to slip him more healing potions. </p><p>“They were looking for you,” Ingrid says, reproachful, and Sylvain at least has the grace to wince.</p><p>“Yeah, sorry.” He rakes a hand through his hair, that old nervous motion. “Wasn’t expecting the secret Sreng peace ritual to be, uh, so secret.”</p><p>Ingrid calls him ridiculous. Sylvain defends himself. Dimitri helps Felix onto a pegasus and smiles a small, secret smile. </p><p>“You’ll be all right?” he asks, and he could mean anything: the bruised cage of Felix’s ribs, the weight of his duty, the frantic pounding of his heart. Dimitri looks lovely when he smiles. He knows that.</p><p>“Your Majesty,” Felix says, as formal as any knight, and then, softer: “Dimitri.” </p><p>Dimitri is many things: the savior of Faerghus, the beast on the battlefield, the man who cupped the side of Felix’s face, delicate like he was afraid he might break him. And Felix is a Fraldarius, but he, too, is other things. A swordsman. A shield. And maybe—foolishly, impossibly—a little in love. </p>
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